|
|
|
|
 | Please don't list this on a work's page as a trope.
Examples can go on the work's YMMV tab. | |
|
"People don't really hate Aquaman.
An adaptation to a long running franchise which irrevocably colors the public's perception of the franchise as a whole. This is rarely for good reasons.
This can not only kill a show, but may also kill any interest in doing future adaptations unless we are promised the next one will be very good. Even if it doesn't, people who aren't fans, who might never even have seen any of the instalments, will bring this one up to mock because of the ink stains.
Sometimes, an Ink Stain Adaptation is used for Lost In Imitation. The results can be disastrous.
See also Adaptation Displacement and Never Live It Down.
Examples
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
- Because of 4Kids Entertainment and their infamous macekres, anime dubs are almost always disliked by a subset of anime fans no matter how accurate they are to the original version*
Cowboy Bebop would be the agreed-upon exception to this rule , thus causing the neverending Subbing versus Dubbing wars that have torn North American anime fandom apart.
For a concrete example, the 4Kids dub of One Piece has probably kept many anime fans away from the series, since they believe it's a childish series with no serious story to it. It's not just about a kid made of rubber wanting to become King of the Pirates and having to face bad guys armed with "poison suction cups" or brightly-colored "pop-guns". It also hasn't even been owned by 4Kids since early 2007.
- A lot of entry-level Galaxy Angel fans immediately split into two camps. One believes that the anime, for throwing out the plot and turning it into a Sitcom with more Character Exaggeration than previously thought possible, has ruined the serious games. The other believes that the games, for having a far-reaching Space Opera plot that mutes the characters to realistic personalities instead of exaggerations, has ruined the funny anime. Both camps invariably grate on the nerves of those that have learned to enjoy both.
- Perhaps a mild version, but many people only know Dragon Ball for its anime adaptation. This causes people to stereotype it as 'having whole episodes of powering up, pointless filler, and many an Inaction Sequence, whereas the manga had none of these. Still, Dragon Ball Z is a very popular anime, so it's not all bad.
- Indecisively the case with Sailor Moon. Some argue the DiC-produced dub of the anime that ran in North America is a more offensive Macekre than anything 4Kids ever did. Nonetheless it still earned the series a large number of fans of both sexes, and had enough staying power that 15 years later, the uncut release of the original manga shot to the top of the graphic novel sales charts (often coming in second only to Batman).
Film
- In 1995, Judge Dredd had a film adaptation starring Sylvester Stallone that had a very devastating impact in the US. While in Britain, Dredd is an old warhorse of a comic that isn't going anywhere, the movie was the first exposure most Americans had to the franchise. Almost two decades later, the impact can still be seen in DC's failed attempt to market Judge Dredd trade paperbacks in American comic stores, and in how the latest film adaptation was a Box Office Bomb despite hewing much closer to the source material and winning the acclaim of those who actually saw it.
- The movie adaptation of Tank Girl, which many critics saw as the comic's swansong (and which pissed off the original creator so badly that he didn't write the character again for a decade). Members of its cult following might disagree, though.
- Though the original Gojira was a serious and scary movie, Godzilla is best remembered by the general populace as a camp icon from the 60s, or by the 1998 In Name Only adaptation.
- The Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes movies of the '30s and '40s turned Watson—a capable physician, a front-line veteran, and a more well-rounded individual than his roommate—into a comical bumbler, which has coloured almost all subsequent portrayals to the point that showing him as at all competent is considered a Subversion. They also solidified the portrayal of Holmes and Watson as middle-aged. It's been observed that in the original "A Study in Scarlet", Watson had only served one term in Afghanistan after getting his M.D., and Holmes was taking classes at the university. He's a battle-hardened vet, home with a war wound! He's a flaky, substance-abusing grad student! They Fight Crime!
- This is an overstatement; the idea that Watson was kind of stupid (or rather that he always came off as stupid) goes back at least to the early 20th century. The American humorist Finley Peter Dunne wrote in 1901 that Watson "don't know anything, and anything he knows is wrong. He has to look up his name in the parish register before he can speak to himself. He's a great friend of Sherlock Holmes and if Sherlock Holmes ever loses him, he'll find him in the nearest asylum for the feeble-minded." (Dunne's "humorous" phonetic spellings not reproduced).
- Even Conan Doyle himself referred to Watson as Holmes's "rather stupid friend" in 1927.
- Which is very odd indeed, considering it was Holmes, not Watson, who didn't know that the Earth revolved around the Sun in "A Study in Scarlet". Holmes was brilliant, but very narrow minded in his studies (at least in theory, detectives always seem to be full of information that they have no business knowing, except to move the plot along), which Watson found very peculiar early on.
- There's a difference between ignorance (Holmes) and stupidity (Watson, at least in comparison).
- Watson is not necessarily stupid in the original Conan Doyle tales, but rather average. Everyone except a small handful of villains looks dim-witted when compared to Holmes.
- After all, the man is a doctor.
- This might have finally come full circle however. Currently, there are no less than three concurrent versions of the Sherlock Holmes characters (the Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law movies, the Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman BBC miniseries, and the Johnny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu CBS series.) In all three series, Watson (be he John or Joan) comes across as intelligent and capable, even if he/she is perpetually a step or two behind Sherlock. The bumbling Watson sidekick might be discredited.
- Although this portrayal has stained Dr. Watson's reputation, it actually raised popular interest in Holmes in general, and thus did not stain the franchise.
- The first sound version of Frankenstein simplified and compressed the story considerably and changed the character of Frankenstein's creation. In particular, the monster in the original story was actually about as lithe as a human, could speak, and was very intelligent, not the stiff, shambling, groaning monster of the movies. He also did not have bolts in his neck or a cylindrical flat-top head. The movie solidified the idea that the monster was called Frankenstein, though this mix-up was already in effect in the preceding decades.
- As with Frankenstein, Dracula is best known today through movies (take your pick: Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Gary Oldman, etc.) and other forms of popular culture rather than the original novel.
- The success of the The Lord of the Rings films has dramatically colored public perception of the work, for better or worse, since the films put their own dramatically different spin on various themes. The number of people who read the books for the first time prior to seeing the films or knowing everything that happens therein is expected to approach zero. The studio has struggled to put together a prequel, The Hobbit, a famous children's book, due in part to the pressure of making it conform to the existing films (and a trilogy).
- It seemed that the 2004 adaptation of Catwoman starring Halle Berry would kill any chance for a reasonable adaptation for quite some time... though the character appears in The Dark Knight Rises, played by Anne Hathaway.
- The Conan the Barbarian franchise has been a series of ink-stain adaptations building on each other, for better or worse, until the original Howard stories were Lost In Imitation. Some aspects of the Expanded Universe Conan, such as the classic Arnold Schwarzenegger film and Frank Frazetta's artwork depictions, are more successful than others, such as the sequel Conan The Destroyer which with Red Sonja nearly killed the entire genre as well as franchise. And the Conan remake seems to have done it all over again, as it did poorly at the box-office and was savaged by critics.
- Ultimately averted for the film adaptation of Avatar The Last Airbender. Critics unfamiliar with the source material (since it's, y'know, a cartoon) wrote off the series completely, thinking that the TV show must be just as bad as, if not worse than, the movie. This frustrated fans of the series—who by and large hate the movie—to no end, critic Roger Ebert among them. But skip forward a few years and everyone's singing the praises of the cartoon's Sequel Series, The Legend of Korra, while the movie is mostly forgotten, except as perhaps M Night Shyamalan's official fall from grace.
- Averted with Popeye. This 1980 Robert Altman adaptation, with Robin Williams as the world-famous sailor man, notoriously tried to recreate the 10-minute cartoon format at feature length and failed miserably. Most critics and audiences, many of whom were unfamiliar with the original source material, were so disgusted with the movie that the Max Fleischer cartoons looked much, much better by comparison. Those cartoons continued to be popular on TV long after the movie was forgotten.
- For most people, Superman is synonymous with the Christopher Reeve movies.
Literature
- The King James version of The Bible, with its antiquated (it was deliberately archaic even in James' day) version of English, seems to have produced in some people the rather bizarre notion that God speaks Ye Olde Englishe exclusively, and that it's very nearly sacrilegious to use modern English when speaking to or about Him. To this day, there are a great many Christians and Christian denominations (especially those on the fundamentalist end), known as "King James Onlyites", who will insist that the King James Version is the only English translation "approved" by God, and can get very touchy on the subject. However, outside the American "Bible Belt", these people are in the minority in much of the world.
Live Action TV
- The re-imagined Battlestar Galactica had to deal with the cheesy legacy of its predecessor. True, the original did have a lot of fans but even a larger segment who only remembered the funny costumes, the IN SPACE! plots and, oh gods, the kids... The new show's success and the ire it drew from the fans of the original was a result of its efforts to distance itself from these aspects by going Darker and Edgier.
One of Ronald D. Moore's main aims in re-imagining the BSG was to "take from the old show what worked and leave the rest" and he genuinely seemed to believe that the original show had a very good premise that simply could not be portrayed justly in the 1970s.
- The 70s Wonder Woman series starring Lynda Carter colored, and continues to color, peoples' cultural knowledge of the character. Unlike Batman, however, Wonder Woman has never had the benefit of a successive adaptation that mitigates the Camp elements of the 70s show. The Justice League animated series has helped to some extent, but popular culture still looks almost exclusively to the Carter version, and a recent adaptation with Adrianne Palicki (Friday Night Lights) was cancelled before it aired.
- While Power Rangers is a successful franchise on its own, many Super Sentai purists view it as the reason why Super Sentai will never get the proper international recognition it deserves, since the adapted footage of the costumes and giant robot battles are so deeply ingrained with Power Rangers, Super Sentai could never stand on its own merits. It's not uncommon to see Super Sentai videos on the internet (such as the "Legendary War" scene from Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger) to be labeled as Power Rangers videos. This is especially prevalent among fans from countries such as Brazil, the Philippines, or France, which used to air locally-dubbed versions of Super Sentai before switching to Power Rangers dubs.
- On another level, the individual Sentai seasons can be tarred with the Rangers brush. Some past seasons get a bad reputation simply because of the following Rangers adaptations. Some fans who watch Rangers first looked a little skeptically on Gaoranger or Boukenger simply because of how badly they were adapted into Wild Force or Operation Overdrive.
- This also applies to tokusatsu in general. Fairly often people would call any costumed superhero from Japan "a Power Ranger", despite having no resemblance to one whatsoever.
- The 60s TV interpretation of Batman with its campy costumes, ludicrous gadgets and cheesy Hit Flash effects still linger on as some people's view of the character, despite several adaptations and major character changes since. This has continued to the extent that Warner Bros. Consumer Products has approached Adam West and 20th Century Fox (producers of the TV show) in 2012 about producing merchandise based on the TV shows. (Also, greeting cards from Hallmark tend to follow the Adam West design, which most closely resembled the traditional comic book design.) The Jim Holmes incident may further encourage this revival of the West version.
- The TV series was a distillation of the very worst of the Comics Code/Silver Age era Batman comics, roughly late '50s to mid '60s. In fact some say that the later (1970s-80s) portrayals of Batman were a backlash against the show. In Amazing Heroes#119 in 1987 (two years before the Michael Keaton film), Max Allan Collins had an interview. He said the following:
“I’m afraid what I’m running smack up into is the old Batman TV show controversy: the old business about, Gee that was a TV show that made fun of Batman and made fun of comic books, so we have to show people that Batman and comic books are serious and they’re adult and accordingly all the fun goes out of it. There was a reason why that TV show was played for laughs and that is when you put actual human beings in those costumes and act out those stories, it looks stupid. They betray their juvenile roots. It can’t be done straight. I defy them to do the movie straight”.
- Then again, it has been argued that the TV show continued to be popular through the 90s and beyond because quite a few people (particularly parents) thought of that as a sort of antidote to the dark, violent Tim Burton movies—in other words, something of a reverse backlash. Adam West himself remarked that he was proud that the original series (usually) taught moral values and had him operating as a deputized aid to the police.
- In some ways, Batman was an ink stain for the genre of Western superheroes. Until 2000 or so, when superhero movies started being huge, any outside journalism on the genre would feature "Bif! Pow!" in the headline, as if Adam West was the last word on the subject.
- Though comic books usually have sound effects anyway, except for Prince Valiant and a few others. Some don't understand why comic fans get annoyed by those comic-related articles that come out in mainstream press about that mention sound effects like “pow” and “zap,” claiming that they’re perpetuating a myth about comics that started with the Batman TV show as if it’s inaccurate to associate sound effects with comics, or that they’re some kind of anomaly in the history of comics.
- Masked Rider, Saban's adaptation of Kamen Rider Black RX, was not just an ink stain to the Kamen Rider franchise itself, it was also an ink stain to its very own name. Originally "Masked Rider" was the official romanized name of Kamen Rider (kamen simply means "mask" in Japanese), but because the name "Masked Rider" is so closely associated to the Saban version outside Japan, most fans refuse to use it despite its prominence in many products. When Adness made Kamen Rider Dragon Knight (a remake of Kamen Rider Ryuki), Executive Producer Steve Wang insisted
 on using "Kamen Rider" instead of "Masked Rider" since he wanted to distance the show from the Saban version. The Japanese shows, which were using the romanized name of "Masked Rider" on the logos since Kamen Rider Kuuga, followed suit by switching to "Kamen Rider" beginning with Kamen Rider Double.
On top of that, some time ago Saban applied for a trademark for "Power Rider", which many believe is their giving "Kamen Rider" another swing.
- Warehouse 13 uses this as a major plot point. All of the stories children grew up with, such as Cinderella and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, were bowdlerized Warehouse-issue fabrications designed to downplay the more horrifying aspects of the true stories.
- Although the book series it was based off of was reasonably popular at the time, the Dinotopia miniseries has colored the view of the entire franchise in the minds of many.
Video Games
- Any time that a Video Game receives an animated adaptation (no matter which side of the Pacific produces it) fits as this. And 9 times out of 10, the only way to displace an impression from an animated series, is with a new animated series (e.g. The Mega 'Toons overriding Captain Mega-N for Mega Man and Dr. Wily.)
- Bloody Roar: Each sequel after the 2nd further destroyed people's perceptions that the game involved any skill or strategy, culminating with Bloody Roar 4, where one could almost justly assume the entire series was just a Button Masher.
- Castlevania Rondo Of Blood, the Japanese-only PC Engine instalment of the Castlevania franchise, received one in the form of the SNES adaptation, Dracula X, which eschewed all of the stages as well as a playable Maria, and ratcheted the difficulty upward to ungodly levels. It did not go over well at all, and anyone unaware of the original would immediately think of the SNES game instead even when the PC Engine version was specifically mentioned. Luckily, this was all remedied with the release of the PSP mini-compilation The Dracula X Chronicles, which included both the original Rondo along with the remake, as well as its sequel Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and subsequently, the appearance of a perfectly emulated Rondo for the Wii's Virtual Console.
- Any reference to Donkey Kong will always portray him as he appeared in the original arcade game, ignoring all subsequent ones.
Western Animation
- Super Friends has crippled Aquaman as a character forever. Give him a harpoon hand, replace it with a magical water hand, point out how life at the bottom of the ocean has made him stronger, faster, and more resilient than most humans... and everyone will still be like, "He's just some guy who swims fast and talks to fish." It's gotten to the point where DC finally decided to kill off the old Aquaman and create a new one.
- Hawkman, too, lost a great deal of what made him great. Among companions who could fly and bench-press planets, or fly and become living lightning, or fly and create any green-colored thing they could imagine, Hawkman was the Super Friend who could fly ... and do nothing else.
- Everyone remembers the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, while the much darker original comics and more recent cartoon and movies seem to be living in its shadow... Much like the '60s Batman example earlier in the page.
- Everyone remembers Filmation's cartoon of He Man And The Masters Of The Universe, with its goofy takes on the characters and the moral segments at the end. Very few remember the previous DC Comics take on Masters Of The Universe, where the Sorceress is referred to as 'The Goddess' and lives in a cave (and not Castle Greyskull—and she and Zoar the falcon are separate characters), Prince Adam (He-Man's alter-ego who didn't appear in the toyline minicomics... at first) is known for 'wenching and carousing', and Skeletor is a much more dangerous villain who kills a rival wizard in combat. There were also illustrated books released with the original action figures which gave different origins for the characters (Teela, instead of being the Sorceress' daughter, is a magical clone of hernote which practically makes Teela her "daughter" anyway), and had a storyline where He-Man's Sword of Power was split in two (with He-Man possessing one half and Skeletor the other—this was reflected in the original action figure accessories with two 'sword halves' with the characters' figures that could be put together). Later takes on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (such as the 1987 live-action movie and the 2002 series) don't seem to be talked about as much as the 80's Filmation cartoon.
- A rare positive example is the effect that the episode "Heart Of Ice" had on the character of Mr. Freeze in Batman The Animated Series. The episode had given him a tearjerking backstory and a beautifully done characterization that is considered canon by comics and fans, overriding his relatively flat '60s version.
- When people think of Aladdin, odds are they'll think of the Disney version with its storybook version of Persia/Arabia, rather than the Chinese setting that the original story employed. To be fair, nearly all adaptations of Aladdin were set in Arabia well before Disney got their hands on the story.
- Pocahontas, meanwhile, is one of the biggest subversions. The legend of John Smith and Pocahontas being lovers had built for centuries—but once Disney put that myth to celluloid, the Vocal Minority that knew its inaccuracies raised such a stink that everyone now knows the real Pocahontas was only twelve years old at the time and Smith probably didn't even care that she existed. She even married John Rolfe and moved with him to England, a fact that Disney inexplicably got right in the direct-to-video sequel.
- Inverted in the case of The Real Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2. It's been said GB2 is seen as the runt of the franchise because RGB set such a high standard with writing and characterization.
- My Little Pony is frequently dismissed as a Glurge outlet. This is almost entirely because of G3, which consists almost entirely of saccharine nonsense. People turned onto the franchise by My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic are often surprised to find G1 can be remarkably more mature than they previously thought.
|
|
